A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The average premium will more than double, according to KFF Health News, the nonpartisan health policy organization which ran the numbers. Gerard Anderson has been sizing up who is likely to pay the most. He's a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. So, Professor, who is in for the sharpest increase if Congress can't come to an agreement?
GERARD ANDERSON: So anyone who makes about 50,000 to $200,000 a year is going to have the greatest increases in their premiums, simply because the subsidies that were - additional subsidies that were put in really benefited that population the greatest.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Now, it sounds like it's going to be a lot of people. What is driving those differences? Is it where people live, how old they are or something else?
ANDERSON: It is all of the above. Everybody is unique. It depends on how sick you are, what plan you are, what are the other plans in the area, whether or not you originally had a more expensive plan and now can go down to a less ex (ph) plan. So everyone is going to have a very different experience. The typical person will end up paying about twice as much in a premium, but that's just the average person. Everyone will have it uniquely affect them.
MARTÍNEZ: Professor, this net is starting to sound very, very wide in terms of who is going to be affected a lot by this.
ANDERSON: Yeah. It's going to be about 4 million people that are going to lose coverage. There'll be another 10 million people that'll probably have less coverage, but all of us will, in fact, be affected because what'll happen is the doctors in the hospitals will all of a sudden see more patients that can't pay, and when that happens, they'll need to raise their rates. And when the rates get increased by the hospitals and physicians, insurance premiums for everybody who has private insurance will increase. So that's a hundred and fifty million people. So it's not just the 4 million that are going to lose coverage, the 10 million that will have less coverage, but it's all people who have private insurance are going to be affected, maybe not immediately, but certainly within a year.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. We just heard from some people on these marketplace plans a few minutes ago that someone said that they would have to make the budget work somehow. One said that he might skip insurance altogether. Do you expect many people will drop health care, just completely say, no more health care for me, at least for now, if they lose subsidies?
ANDERSON: I think you will expect about 4 million, and it's hard to say exactly how many and exactly who will make that decision. But those people tend to be a little bit healthier. If you have cancer, if you have had a heart attack, if you've had any serious illness, you're going to be very reluctant to drop your health insurance coverage. However, if you're basically healthy and maybe have one or two things wrong with you, you might say, I just don't have the money. The problem with that is the people that remain in the plans are going to be sicker and sicker and so the premiums will increase. So the premiums themselves are going to increase, maybe 26% this year, simply because the insurers believe that the sick people remain with coverage and the healthy people will drop coverage.
MARTÍNEZ: Let's hear from a Republican with an alternative. Here's Senator Bill Cassidy on Fox News Sunday.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
BILL CASSIDY: So if we do continue the subsidies, you can put that over here, hundred percent going to the patient and put it into a health savings account. They get a cheaper premium, and they get first-dollar coverage. They have money in their account to pay for their daughter's sprained ankle.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So what about that, health savings accounts, instead? How helpful could they be?
ANDERSON: They would be great for the sprained ankle. If it's a small amount, it will be just fine to have a self - health savings account. However, if you have a serious illness, if you go to the hospital, the health savings account, which maybe will give you 3- or $4,000, will pay less than one-tenth of the cost of the hospitalization. So they're going to be absolutely no help at all.
MARTÍNEZ: Just a few seconds left. I mean, do you think there will ever be a U.S. health care system that both parties can agree on and say, this is it. This is what we got in the U.S.?
ANDERSON: So I'm hoping that's the case, but I'm not optimistic. The real difference between the two signs is what I call the 20-80 rule - 20% of us incur 80% of the spending. And the Republicans are concerned about the 80% that are not sick. The 20% that are sick, that's where the Democrats are focused.
MARTÍNEZ: Gerard Anderson is a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins. Thank you.
ANDERSON: Thank you.
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